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Journal of The Royal Television Society
September 2016 l Volume 53/8

From the CEO
The Olympics may be
over, summer holidays
are a distant memory
and soon the nights
will be drawing in.
But there is no reason
to be despondent, as
the RTS’s exciting autumn events
programme is gearing up.
Our stellar London conference,
“Full stream ahead”, takes place on
27 September. We have a matchless
array of speakers, including two of the
US’s most impressive media leaders:
NBCUniversal CEO Steve Burke; and
Ted Sarandos, Chief Content Officer
of Netflix.
The conference is chaired by the
indefatigable Kevin MacLellan,

Chairman of NBCUniversal International. For a preview of what Steve
and Kevin have to say about some of
the issues concentrating minds across
TV and the broader content spectrum,
don’t miss interviews with them in
this month’s Television.
Our busy September line-up starts
with an RTS Futures event that should
be irresistible to addicts of shows such
as Geordie Shore and First Dates. An
outstanding panel will dissect “The
reality of reality TV”.
Also coming up are the latest instalments of our “Anatomy of a hit” strand.
For the first one, sports fans will want
to join a group of experts to discuss
Sky Sports’s pioneering coverage of
the English Premier League.

Contents
5
6
8
10
14
16

Barbara Slater’s TV Diary

Barbara Slater leaves Salford for Rio, where she shares
in Team GB’s euphoria

The lure of the small screen

Netflix’s autumn blockbuster The Crown is made by film
veterans. Stuart Kemp discovers why TV is attracting the
best movie-making talent

If that isn’t enough to whet your
appetite, the subject of the second
“Anatomy of a hit” is BBC TV’s gripping thriller The Night Manager.
The show itself is mentioned in this
month’s cover story. In it, Stuart Kemp
charts how television is making
inroads into territory that was once
the clear domain of feature films.
Finally, don’t miss Andrew Billen’s
revealing interview with Sky’s head of
drama, Anne Mensah, or Barbara Slater’s Rio diary.

Theresa Wise

Drama’s different voice

Self-effacing and jokey, Sky’s Anne Mensah is an
unusual TV executive. Andrew Billen finds out what
makes her so unique

Our Friend in the North

Graeme Thompson sees the next generation of TV
professionals hard at work on two local drama shoots

High-flyer lands at Channel 4

Charles Gurassa’s business credentials are beyond
question, says Maggie Brown. But will he succeed as
Channel 4’s chair?

The new game in town

From YouTube to UKTV, sports fans are watching
a huge range of second-tier sports events for free.
Ross Biddiscombe investigates

One giant leap for broadcasting

Gordon Jamieson looks at how a succession of small
steps has transformed the Amsterdam tech-fest IBC

TV diary
Barbara Slater leaves Salford for Rio,
where she shares in Team GB’s euphoria

M

y week starts
at BBC Sport
HQ in Salford
at what is a
very exciting
time – the
Olympics are
under way. I walk to our ground-floor
operation, where the BBC Breakfast
set has been relocated for 17 days so
that we can bring viewers all of the
action from the previous night.
Join a morning conference call with
colleagues in London before starting a
day of back-to-back meetings, both
with colleagues in Salford and liaising
with those in Brazil – the four-hour
time difference can make for a very
long day.
■ Prepping for tomorrow, when I’ll
fly out to Rio to oversee our Olympics production and meet representatives of the International Olympic
Committee, the sports community,
rights-holders and the world’s broadcasters. Before any trip, there is always
one of those “what have I forgotten to
do?” moments. Today is no different.
■ Today, I fly out to Brazil (economy,
for some who will be interested).
When I land, I get my first taste of
one of the challenges faced by the
teams in Rio – traffic jams. It’s a
long, hot bus journey to the BBC
centre of operations.
It’s been very tough: those teams out
and about in Rio, and working at the
many venues spread across the city,
have faced lengthy and tiring delays.
Everyone is working long hours. It’s
intense work but you can feel the
sense of pride and excitement to be
working at an Olympic Games.

Television www.rts.org.uk September 2016

■ A day in the IBC, where all of the
international broadcasters are based.
Some broadcasters have more than
2,000 staff – and their own Starbucks. It’s the nerve centre of our
output and is always a hive of activity.
Meet with the senior team as well
as production teams in the early
morning to get a feel of how everything is going. We keep across all the
audience feedback and UK media to
track how the Games are being
received at home.
We look in detail at the previous
day’s viewing figures and the performance of our digital services. There’s
a chance to check our radio operation,
which is working with an innovative
split production for the first time –
the control room is thousands of
miles away in Salford, with the
­presenters in Rio.
■ Lots of meetings today. I’m
attending the Olympic Broadcasting
Services briefing – it’s the chance
for the world’s broadcasters to give
feedback on the host coverage.
There’s also an opportunity to showcase our operations to members of
the IOC.
There’s still lots of liaison back to
the UK, both to Salford and to our
London BBC One and BBC Four
scheduling teams.
■ With the Olympics dominating
the peak-time schedules, there are
critical decisions to make about
how the coverage works across the
different channels and around programmes such as the Six and Ten
O’clock News.
“Super Saturday” became synonymous with London 2012 due to the

incredible success for Team GB on
that night. Here we are again, four
years later, with the same three athletes, Jessica Ennis-Hill, Mo Farah
and Greg Rutherford, competing for
medals and trying to match the
many successes of British competitors elsewhere.
Meanwhile, it seems we are breaking digital records every day. Saturday
sets an all-time high, with an amazing 17 million unique users on the
Sport website and 7 million accessing
content before 11:00am UK time.
■ After a late finish, it’s an early start.
We have another big day of potential Team GB medals. Little do we
know that today will soon be dubbed
“Super Sunday” in recognition of the
medal haul that is to come.
Another six medals, and history’s
been rewritten and records broken all
over the place. On days like today, the
editorial teams have to be flexible,
agile and able to make good, lastminute decisions and predict where
the story is moving to.
When is it right to move to another
sport or change shot? These sound like
small things but, if we get them wrong,
the audience soon lets us know.
If we get them right, we have the
potential to create those incredible
moments that the whole country
talks about. So, it’s another late night
but the whole team is on a high after
a simply incredible day.
The audience reaction is fantastic,
as well – what better reward? TV has
audience peaks of more than 10 million and, online, we score our own
new record, of over 19 million.
Barbara Slater is Director of BBC Sport.

5

The Crown

The lure of the
small screen

W

hen the latest
project from
multiple Oscar
nominees
Peter Morgan
(The Queen) and
Stephen Daldry (The Reader) reaches
audiences in November, it won’t be in
cinemas.
Morgan has created and written The
Crown, an extended biopic on the life of
Queen Elizabeth II. Daldry is the executive producer and has directed an
episode of the show. The series begins
with Elizabeth’s marriage in 1947 and
aims to recount the story of her life
until the present day.
The Crown stars Claire Foy as the
young British monarch and former

6

Production finance

Netflix’s autumn
blockbuster The Crown is
made by film veterans.
Stuart Kemp discovers
why TV is attracting the
best movie-making talent

Doctor Who Time Lord Matt Smith as
her new husband, Prince Phillip.
An ambitious six seasons of 10 episodes are planned. Netflix is reported
to be pumping £100m into the show.
The on-demand service hopes that it
will be a jewel in the crown of its original programming to rank alongside
the remake of House of Cards.
Netflix Chief Content Officer Ted
Sarandos says that The Crown, brought
into being by film talent, is a story that
his service can “produce on a larger
scale than anybody else and that we
think we can win the day on”.
The series is the latest in a string of
mammoth TV projects mounted and
produced by people who have been
corralled from the big screen: Oscar

Netflix

winner Steve McQueen is working on a
family-and-friends drama set in west
London for the BBC; and David Fincher
is directing and executive producing
the Netflix-backed FBI crime drama
Mindhunter. Baz Luhrmann, meanwhile,
is in post on The Get Down, a drama set
in 1970s New York, for Sony Pictures
Television and Netflix.
Danish director Susanne Bier’s
glossy John le Carré adaptation, The
Night Manager, made for the BBC and
AMC in the US, showcased the skills
she acquired in the movie business.
Oscar winner Jane Campion also
switched medium to make Top of the
Lake as a mini-series for the BBC and
the Sundance Channel, while Martin
Scorsese executive produced and
directed an episode of HBO’s
music-industry drama Vinyl.
These are just the tip of the iceberg.
The film-to-TV crossover is fuelled
partly by the big bucks that wellheeled global distribution networks
such as Netflix and Amazon can afford
to lavish on product. But three other
factors support the shift.
The first is the tax credits available
in the UK to producers of high-end TV
programmes. Second, and just as
important to film-makers, is the creative breathing space that they are
offered when working in TV. Why
cram a story into 90 minutes when
you could tell it in 10 60-minute parts?
Finally, there is the financial squeeze
being felt by mid-range film producers.
Hollywood studios and smaller production companies alike are concentrating on fewer, bigger tentpole
properties and on established franchises. In the $35m range, budgets are
harder than ever to assemble.
“The creative space that premium
drama occupies on television is the
creative space that a lot of our films
used to occupy,” says Tim Bevan,
Co-chair of Working Title Films.
He is the co-founder of one of the
UK’s most successful film production
companies. Working Title’s credits
include Love, Actually and Bridget Jones’s
Diary. In 2010, Bevan and partner Eric
Fellner took the decision to set up a
TV division with backing from
NBCUniversal.
“We are probably doing a bit more in
the movie space than in the TV space
right now, but I can see that changing
in the next couple of years, certainly in
terms of hours produced,” Bevan says.
Six months ago, Working Title
brought in renowned TV producer

Television www.rts.org.uk September 2016

WHY CRAM
A STORY INTO
90 MINUTES
WHEN YOU
COULD TELL IT
IN 10 60-MINUTE
PARTS?
Andrew Woodhead to lead the company’s British TV arm. He had helped
steer Sky’s high-profile series Fortitude,
BBC spy drama Spooks and The Fixer for
ITV. Across the pond in LA, veteran TV
executive Andrew Stearn runs the US
side of the operation.
“Because of the international market­
place, the budgets are changing. This
means that what you are capable of
achieving is greater as well,” says
Woodhead.
With US premium cable shows able
to offer between six and 10 hours to
tell a story and develop characters,
television is a very good space for
character-driven material.
Harry Potter, Gravity and Paddington
producer David Heyman formed Heyday Television, a joint venture with
NBCUniversal International Studios,
last year to create premium, long-form,
scripted content for a global marketplace. “Telling a story over multiple
seasons gives you the opportunity to
explore characters in greater depth,
develop them and see them grow over
a period of time,” says Heyman. “It’s
one of the many things that happened
with [Harry] Potter in both books and
films. The audience built a sense of
ownership over the characters and that
is both appealing and enjoyable.”
Film producers Ben Pugh and Rory
Aitken, who worked together on Eran
Creevy’s Welcome to the Punch, founded
42 with ex-Independent Talent agents
Josh Varney and Kate Buckley in 2013.
It is one of the very few UK companies straddling production and talent
management (such entities are common in Hollywood) and moves seamlessly between film and TV projects.
The company hired former BBC
drama commissioner and author Eleanor Moran to run its TV division, which
has 10 TV projects in active development with UK broadcasters and two
with US ones. It is half way through
production on a four-part, animated
adaptation of Richard Adams’s Watership

Down for the BBC in the UK and Netflix
everywhere else in the world.
The approach to financing Watership
Down was very similar to that for an
independent film in that it involved a
tapestry of funders. Moreover, the
show is bonded (an insurance paid to
guarantee the project is completed), a
new thing for television, thanks to the
reality of these more complex financing structures.
“We’ve been doing complicated
financial closing on independent films
for ages,” says Varney. “It’s completely
new to television, so traditional TV
producers who are now doing more
international shows are having to learn
a new skill just to continue making
that type of television. For independent film producers it’s the formats, be
it series or single films, that they don’t
know so well.”
Also, talent deals are much more
transparent in TV, compared with
film’s infamously opaque world of
residuals and box office-related pay.
“Talent can probably get a deal that
exceeds what you’d expect to make on
a feature film,” says Bevan. “And television displays certainty.”
Number 9 Films, headed by Stephen
Woolley and Elizabeth Karlsen, whose
recent credits include Todd Haynes’s
Carol, starring Cate Blanchett, is stepping
into TV drama production, too. Karlsen
is teaming up with Nicola Shindler’s
Red Production Company to “learn
from the best”. Together, they are shepherding an adaptation of Henry James’s
Portrait of a Lady to the small screen.
“We decided that we would team up
with someone because we haven’t
done television before,” says Karlsen.
Her experience in producing independent films for more than 20 years
has armed her with caution.
She warns against the notion held by
many independent film producers that
TV is easier to set up than film, both
creatively and financially. “We only get
to know about the things [on television] that we see,” she points out. “I’m
sure there are many stories of things
that fall by the wayside.”
Another market pressure is that the
best writers, whether they work in TV
or film, are all booked up now.
“Change breeds opportunity and it’s
a good time to be a disruptive style of
company in an industry that is different to what it was five years ago,” notes
42’s Aitken. “The only certainty we
have is that it will be seismically different five years from now.”

7

With a diverse portfolio, strong
profit growth and numerous ­
divisions breaking records, it has
been an amazing few years for
NBCUniversal since Comcast’s acqui­
sition. What do you credit for this
level of performance?
Our performance over the last five
years has exceeded our expectations. Since Comcast acquired NBCUniversal in 2011, we have doubled our
cash flow and almost every part of our
company is firing on all cylinders.
The NBC Television network, which
had been in fourth place for a long
time, has won the broadcast season for
two years in a row, thanks to hit shows
such as The Voice, and two of our newest series, Blindspot and Chicago Med.
Sunday Night Football remains the
number-one show on TV, and we
added Thursday-night games to the
schedule. On top of that, NBC’s latenight line-up continues to dominate,
with Saturday Night Live, The Tonight
Show Starring Jimmy Fallon and Late Night
with Seth Meyers.
Our news division is also winning
across the board, as NBC Nightly News,
with Lester Holt, Meet the Press and
Today are firmly back in the top spots.
We secured the Olympic broadcast
rights in the US through to 2032 and
just broadcast a record-breaking
6,755 hours of compelling coverage
from the Rio Olympic Games.
Our film business completed its
best year ever in 2015, shattering all
box-­office records. Universal has had
two consecutive record-breaking
years and was the first studio to have
three blockbuster hits — Jurassic World,
Furious 7 and Minions — that each
exceeded $1bn at the box office.
This summer, we had a very successful launch of The Secret Life of Pets,
which broke the record to become the
best opening ever for an original film,
animated or otherwise.
The Universal theme parks have
turned out to be one of the biggest
growth businesses in the portfolio,
and we have seen our investments
in hotels and attractions such as The
Wizarding World of Harry Potter pay
off – with our cash flow more than
tripling since 2009.
We have also placed increased
focus on our international business,
which is led by Kevin MacLellan and
his team, who oversee our businesses
in 36 countries.
Our theme parks division is in the
midst of global expansion, as we are

currently working on a new park in
Beijing and we acquired 51% ownership
of Universal Studios Japan last year.
The international television business, in particular, has seen strong
performance this year. Downton Abbey
is the most highly nominated, non-US
show in the history of the Emmys,
with a total of 69 nominations in its
six-series run. We launched hayu, the
all-reality SVoD service in the UK and
Australia. In Japan, Studio Universal
and E! launched a branded SVoD service
on Avex, the country’s largest mobilevideo platform.
The last five years have been great
for NBCUniversal, but we still have a
lot to do and see a lot of opportunity
ahead of us.

Q

How has the culture of NBC­
Universal changed under your
leadership? What are the leadership
values you introduced to the company
and why are they so important?
We run the company in a very
decentralised way. We want business leaders to feel like they are truly
in charge of their own divisions.
I believe very strongly that this is the
best way to run a company such as
NBC­Universal, and it places an even
higher premium on making sure that
you have the right people in place.
We like people who manage decisively,
put the company first, treat colleagues
and partners well and want to win.
We have also made it a top priority
for collaboration to be a core part of
our culture. The best example is our
“Symphony” efforts, where every one
of our 22 businesses gets behind the
launch of a new film, TV series or
theme-park attraction.
We have also rolled out “Symphony”
internationally, and have seen impressive results from our businesses and
clients in territories around the world.
A notable example was our partnership with Sky around a joint marketing
campaign for The Secret Life of Pets,
which worked very well.

A

Q

What was the strategy behind
acquiring DreamWorks Ani­
mation? How might the acquisition
bolster NBCU’s portfolio, particularly
your film, theme-park and consumer-­
product businesses?
DreamWorks Animation is one of
the world’s most admired family
brands, with a dynamic film business
and an extensive library of intellectual property. The acquisition gives

A

Television www.rts.org.uk September 2016

NBCUniversal broader reach to a host
of new audiences in the highly competitive kids and family entertainment
space. With the addition of DreamWorks,
we will be in a position to launch two
more animated films per year.
Thanks to our partners at Illumination Entertainment and Chris Meledandri, we have experienced great
success with animated franchises
– including hits such as Despicable Me,
Minions and The Secret Life of Pets – that
have not only fuelled some of our
biggest box-office wins, but have also
spawned popular attractions in our
theme parks and helped build our
consumer-products division.
DreamWorks will also give us a
strong footing in the kids TV space,
thanks to its large production operation in Los Angeles.

Q

NBCUniversal has been making
a series of digital investments
including BuzzFeed and Vox Media,
and launching your own SVoD ser­
vices with hayu and Seeso. How do
these investments play into your
vision for the company’s future?
One of our top priorities over the
next decade is to make sure that
the company is well positioned to
capture the growing audience of millennials, who are increasingly spending their time on digital platforms.
Last August, we invested $200m in
BuzzFeed, and $200m in Vox – two
companies that have had tremendous
success in the space and from which
we can learn a lot.
The Olympics provided the perfect
opportunity for us to partner with
BuzzFeed and cover the Games in new
and innovative ways. We sent a crew
of BuzzFeed reporters to Rio, who
captured short, live clips that were
distributed via Snapchat.
We are also partnering with Vox’s
The Verge to run a live Mr Robot aftershow. This is a great way to engage and
grow a young fan base.
Seeso and hayu are also good examples of how we are launching digital
businesses that are aimed at connecting directly with avid fans of specific
genres. Hayu is an all-reality SVoD
service, with fully integrated social-­
media functionality, which launched in
the UK, Ireland and Australia in April.
We have been pleased with the results,
which exceeded our expectations and
provided a lot of learnings to the international teams about running directto-consumer businesses.

A

ALMOST EVERY
PART OF OUR
COMPANY IS
FIRING ON ALL
CYLINDERS

Burke’s
progress
Steve Burke is CEO of NBCUniversal.
He oversees the company’s port­folio
of news, sports and entertainment
networks, a film studio, TV production operations, a TV stations group
and several theme parks. In April,
NBCU bought DreamWorks Animation for $3.8bn.
Burke assumed the role of CEO
in January 2011 following Comcast’s
purchase of NBCU from General
Electric. He was previously COO of
Comcast, having joined in 1998 as
President of Comcast Cable.
During his tenure, Comcast
became the largest cable company,
largest residential internet service
provider and third-largest phone
company in the US, and launched
a wireless business.
Prior to Comcast, Burke worked
for Disney as President of ABC
Broadcasting. He joined Disney
in 1986, where he spearheaded
the launch of stand-alone Disney
Stores. In 1992, he moved to Euro
Disney, where, as President and
COO, he turned the business around.
The son of a senior TV executive,
Burke holds an MBA from Harvard
Business School. He lives in New
York with his wife and five children.
Steve Burke, Chief Executive
­Officer of NBCUniversal, is
a speaker at the RTS London
­Conference on 27 September. He
was interviewed by Steve Clarke.

9

T

he Chair of this year’s RTS
London Conference, Kevin
MacLellan, the London­based Chairman of International at NBCUniversal,
is proof that talent and hard
work, rather than privilege and well-­
placed connections, can take you to
the top of the entertainment industry.
His blue-collar Brooklyn background
was about as far as you could get from
Hollywood or downtown Manhattan.
MacLellan’s family expected him to
follow in his father’s footsteps: they
wanted him to work for the local phone
company. He saw his future differently.
“My parents told me that I was nuts
when I gave them the news that I’d got
a job as a freelance production assistant
working on music videos,” he recalls.
“They looked at me as if I had six
heads. My mum was very annoyed
with me… all that money that had been
spent on a college education. She
wanted me to take the job my father’s
friends had arranged for me at the
phone company.”
More than 25 years later, MacLellan
runs NBCU’s billowing international
business. The job encompasses overseeing growth from TV channels,
movie distribution, TV production and
a library of more than 75,000 TV episodes plus news and theme parks.
He is a Comcast veteran, under
whose leadership Comcast (the US
cable behemoth that bought NBCU

10

NBCUniversal

The global
player
NBCUniversal

Kevin MacLellan runs
NBCU International.
He tells Steve Clarke
why he is determined
to work with the best
of the best
from General Electric in 2011) famously
increased its international channel
subscribers from 17 million to more
than 100 million and grew syndication
revenue by over 500%.
His previous jobs include working
for HBO in Prague (in charge of the
pay-TV outfit’s central and eastern
European programming group) and
Sony Pictures Television International.
Based in London, MacLellan was
Vice-President of Sony’s International
TV Networks business.
NBCU’s international division spans
36 countries (including the UK) and is
a key area for growth at the entertainment giant. He was appointed Chair of
International three years ago.
MacLellan looks conspicuously
casual and his youthful demeanour
may come from being a relatively new
parent. He is dressed in off-white chinos
and a summer-weight check shirt,

open at the neck, finished off with elegant, suede Chelsea boots. With closely
cropped hair and Nordic blue eyes,
MacLellan looks more like an off-duty,
all-American sports coach enjoying a
summer weekend than a media executive at the end of a tiring week.
That is until he starts talking. “I aim
to leave in time to be home at 6:30pm
to feed and put our 14-month-old
twins to bed. But this week I was out
three nights out of four and I’m out
again tonight,” he says ruefully.
MacLellan’s manner is direct and
upbeat. And so it should be. A couple
of days before this interview, Variety
had published another positive story
about NBCU’s US business. Steve Burke,
the company’s CEO, told the paper that
advertising dollars were returning to TV
after a long period of experimenting
with social media and digital.
MacLellan was not surprised. He is
convinced that the future of traditional
advertiser-funded linear TV is secure.
“Listen, I’ve never been a naysayer
on linear,” he says. “I think linear is
going to be around for a very long
time. I believe there is a place for it
that OTT can’t replace.”
He adds: “My belief is that free-to-air
broadcast will continue to be popular
and money will continue to move
into it.
“ As humans, we are pack animals.
We crave shared experiences. I do
believe that it is linear TV that will

MacLellan
on… Brexit
Downton Abbey

MY EXPERIENCE
HAS BEEN
THAT TALENT
IS PROBABLY
THE RAREST
COMMODITY
OUT THERE
continue to deliver those shared experiences in a large way.”
NBCU’s financial results are reported
within Comcast’s and the contribution
made by International is not separated
out. In common with other global US
entertainment businesses, it is International that is growing faster than the
domestic activities.
MacLellan says: “The US advertising
market being so buoyant and the
pay-TV market there being so large
means that there’s a long hill to climb
before you get to the point where
international outweighs domestic
revenues. But in 10 years’ time.…
“For us, there is growth all over the
place.” He identifies the UK, Germany,
Australia, Latin America and France as
key growth markets. “We like to say:
‘We build scale where scale matters.’”
He continues: “Obviously, China and
India are big growth markets. There’s

Television www.rts.org.uk September 2016

less affinity to our content but certainly
there’s large GDP growth in those particular markets and you’re seeing a
large move to the middle class.
“People didn’t use to be able to afford
the kind of products and services that
we provide.”
For many years, Chinese and Indians
have consumed a huge amount of TV
and film, MacLellan points out. The
challenge for companies such as NBCU
has been that most viewers have
tended to ignore Western-style content
– they have generally tuned in to
local-language stations. This is changing, now, as young people watch video
on their mobile phones. “We are seeing
much more of an affinity for English-­
language content over the phone with
young people in those markets. This is
great news for us,” he says.
Turning to the UK, he points out that
NBCU was one of the first US studios
to acquire a British producer, Carnival,
in 2008. The company became famous
for making a certain English country-­
house drama that became a global
phenomenon. But how do you find the
next Downton Abbey?
“If I knew that, I’d be writing dramas.
Listen, you just try and work with the
best talent,” says MacLellan. “My experience has been that talent is probably
the rarest commodity out there – that
is, true, creative talent.
“There are lots of discussions about
how people make a lot of money or �

ITV

Q

Following Brexit, might
NBCU move its interna­
tional HQ from London to
Paris or Frankfurt?
I should never say no to
anything but, right now,
that’s certainly not the plan.
Our CEO felt that you go where
the money is – and the money
is still primarily in western
Europe. The obvious place to
go was London.
From a trade perspective, the
product that we distribute from
this office wouldn’t be so heavily affected [by Brexit] that we’d
have a reason to leave the UK.
At least as things are now.…
Probably the biggest thing that
would decide whether we leave
or not would be the brain drain.
More than 100 of our London-­
based employees are non-British
nationals. Most of them work at
senior levels. If they were
forced to move or we weren’t
able to get visas, that would be
a moment to pause for thought.
What London has right now
is the best of the best. You get to
pool the best talent from different countries. If you close your
borders to that you will see
companies such as ours starting
to see if there is someplace else
we should work from.

A

Kevin MacLellan, Chairman of
NBC­Universal International, is
also Chair of the RTS London
Conference on 27 September.

11

� are treated incredibly well. That’s
because there are so few of them.
“It’s basic economics. There are so
few that they are worth more. Since
we got here, our goals in the UK have
been to work with the best of the best.
“Gareth Neame at Carnival has
done a phenomenal job,” MacLellan
adds. “We’re very proud of that label.
It’s produced one of the highest-rated
dramas in the UK in the past 20 or
30 years. It’s had more Emmy nominations and awards than any other
drama in its history.
“When you’re working with people
that good you will find another Downton Abbey. But there is no exact way
into it… you work with the best, support them and make this a place
where they wanna be.”
If securing hit shows is always
a high-wire act, having access to
NBCU’s massive distribution network
mitigates the risk considerably.
“To be in the production business
as a standalone is not a great business,” he explains. “But to be in the
production business when you’re
working with a distribution business
the size of ours makes a lot of sense.”
Including Carnival, NBCU owns
five UK producers. The others are
Monkey Kingdom, Chocolate Media,
Telecopter TV and Lucky Giant.
Is NBCU considering acquiring
other UK independents? “Yes,” he
confirms. “A lot have been bought.
There are not a whole lot out there.
We do not have a philosophy that
more is better. It is more about

12

quality than quantity. It is not about
volume of hours.
“The idea of buying a big All3Media
is not really something that is part of
our strategy. Our focus is to work
with the best of the best in Britain.
“So, if there was a great British
writer or director or producer who
had their own production entity, we
would certainly be interested in
working with them.
“From that perspective, we would
potentially acquire or fund the start-up
of a new production company.”
Last year, NBCU announced a joint
venture with film producer David
Heyman, Heyday Television. The
initiative followed Heyman producing BBC Two’s classy The Worricker
Trilogy, made with Carnival and written by David Hare.
It has been widely reported that
NBCU has considered making a bid
for ITV. MacLellan insists that “none of
the stories that appeared were true”.
Might it happen one day? “There’s
a possibility that we make an investment. At this point, there is no plan to
make one,” he says.
NBCU’s strategy in the UK involves
continuing “to develop the best possible English-language content and
distributing that around the world”.
MacLellan explains: “A big part of
why we’re here, and one of the
advantages of having our own office
here, is mining the talent that exists
in the UK so that we can move that
product over to the US. That’s the
home run for us.”

Sky

NBC and Sky 1 show You, Me & the Apocalypse

MacLellan
on… Netflix

Q
A

What is your take on
Netflix?
Netflix has been a revolutionary delivery platform
that has performed very well
because it has a great service.
It took a very complicated
concept and made it quite
simple to follow.
Its interface, which, interestingly, looks a little old compared with some new entrants,
was groundbreaking when it
started. It was simple and
intuitive. Add to that, a reliable
technical streaming service.
Let me tell you that, having
launched these services ourselves, we’ve realised how
difficult that is behind the
scenes [NBCU launched reality
streaming service hayu in the
UK this spring].
The fact that Netflix was able
to do it on the scale that it did,
reliably and intuitively, and
then to add all the content, was
incredibly admirable.
We’ve learned a lot from
[how it did that]. The way consumers will interact with a
product like that has really set
the path for the rest of us.

September 2016 www.rts.org.uk Television

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A head
for
figures

K

aren Bradley’s
appointment as
­Secretary of State
for Culture, Media
and Sport came as
a Westminster surprise. Unexpected that is, except to
Theresa May’s tight-knit coterie, who
understand the key operating principles of her rise to the leadership.
The new Prime Minister keeps good
faith with those she deems loyal, level-­
headed, and unflashy. To that extent,
the new culture secretary is a thoroughly Conservative appointment of
the old school: she is a trusted adjutant,
rather than an ideologue or previous
expert with hobby horses to ride.
As a former shadow culture secretary herself in the mid-2000s, May
is confident that she knows enough
about the broad brief to make the
major decisions.
Bradley’s rise is a case of the pendulum swinging from an ideological
culture secretary to a technocrat. Her
predecessor, John Whittingdale, had a
long history of seeking a smaller BBC

14

Westminster politics

Anne McElvoy warns
that new media minister
Karen Bradley’s grasp
of maths should make
the BBC nervous
but May has in the past spoken more
warmly of a “strong BBC”, “important
for the UK and the broadcasting industry as a whole”.
The elevation of a more moderate
ministerial voice reflects May’s general
approach: avoiding unnecessary controversy as she wrestles with finding a
deliverable Brexit plan that does minimum damage to UK plc.
A rung under May’s closest ally,
Philip Hammond, who has been promoted to Chancellor, the unassuming
Bradley is the politician that May trusts
to act instinctively with the grain of
her own interests.

“She is one of the few people May
would spend time with outside the day
job,” notes a fellow minister. May invites
few colleagues for a gin and tonic after
work but Bradley is one of them.
In part, this is because May has a
personal affinity with the hard-working
Bradley. She is a comprehensive-­
educated maths graduate of Imperial
College London, who has slogged away
as a senior tax adviser at KPMG.
This relative newcomer – she was
elected to the Commons only in 2010
– combines the talents of a flinty politician with high intelligence and a low
profile. It was not always certain that
she would reach the upper ministerial
slopes. Westminster watchers (in this
case, me) noted that her main rival for
higher office was Andrea Leadsom, a
gutsy Brexiteer briefly a candidate for
the Tory leadership.
As a former accountant, Bradley
knew more about financial projections
than many of those in more senior
decision-making jobs. “She is very
calm and focused, and can juggle
numbers at top speed,” notes an MP

who sat with her on the Work and
Pensions Committee.
Her drawback, in a job that involves
sweetening many perpetually annoyed
groups in the arts, media and sport, has
been a lack of discernible personality.
But a similar frosty detachment has not
stopped her governor rising to the top.
BBC bosses might take note. It is
Bradley’s ability to master figures and
their context that is one of the main
reasons she has been given media
fiefdom.
The chief focus of the role, as far as
May is concerned, is to steer through
Charter renewal based on the recent
BBC white paper. As for culture and
sport, it would be hard to see why
Bradley, whose only known cultural
indulgence is crime novels, is any
better qualified than the next minister.
Policy-makers close to Team May
point out that unravelling Charter
renewal is not a priority for No 10.
Some trailing wires, however, are in
evidence and May requires a trusted
ally to sort them out.
In essence, the trade-off in the white

Television www.rts.org.uk September 2016

Getty Images

THE UNASSUMING
BRADLEY IS
THE POLITICIAN
THAT MAY
TRUSTS TO ACT
INSTINCTIVELY
WITH THE GRAIN
OF HER OWN
INTERESTS

paper is a deal struck by BBC Director-­
General Tony Hall: in return for no
major reduction of the corporation’s
scale and activities, the BBC will pay
for the £650m-plus cost of free TV
licences for the over-75s.
Some sticking points remain, however. One is the threat of government-­
appointed members to a new BBC
unitary board. The Government’s original instinct was to leaven the BBC’s
tendency to appoint unchallenging
Trust members, who minsters saw as
inexperienced in the commercial sector and too close to the corporation’s
status-quo inclinations.
But government appointees run
counter to the long-standing principle
of BBC independence. They would be
resisted fiercely by Lord Hall and
prominent corporation supporters.
That, senior BBC sources suggest,
might see May trading away the idea of
political appointees or agreeing to farm
it out to an arm’s-length committee.
But in exchange for what? The detail
of Hall’s “Compete or Compare” strategy on independent production might
face further scrutiny. Opening up radio
to a 60% quota for independents by
2022 worries internal suppliers.
Will Jackson, Managing Director of
the trade body Radio Independents
Group, says: “I’d expect the focus to be
on ensuring distinctiveness in BBC
Radio. The speedy opening up of the
schedules to competition from independent producers will be vital.”
BBC Television, mired in arguments
about market impact and “distinctiveness”, may yet find itself with a fight on
its hands over “competitive scheduling”
of popular shows such as Strictly Come
Dancing and the effect it has on commercial rivals.
But, says one Tory backbencher,
“Theresa does not strike one as the
woman who fancies a big ruckus over
Strictly – not least because she is an
occasional viewer herself”.
As for the plans for BBC Studios, the
likelihood is that a selectively arranged
market will emerge in which ringfenced shows cannot be contended for.
Other, less well-known programmes
are more likely to be farmed out to
indies in order to make the plan work.
Independents fear that the arrangement is still too dependent on commissioners who want to protect the
output of existing BBC departments.
The overall impression is that the
Government is unlikely to revisit
Charter renewal at this stage, suggests

a senior BBC management figure: “It is
like fiddling with a piece of embroidery
– you pull one thread and the rest
becomes unstitched.”
Similarly, there is scant sign of interest in resurrecting the mooted sale of
Channel 4.
Instead, the main concern of the
new DCMS team answering to a PM
keen to underline her understanding
of the UK outside London and the
South East concerns the nations and
regions. Bradley will want to ensure
that the BBC achieves greater diversity
of supply without simply “brass plating” companies based in London.
Incidentally, as an MP for Staffordshire, she embodies the rise of the
non-metropolitan, May-era Tory.
May is not always inclined to accept
the Cameron-Osborne legacy. One
clue to her thinking might lie in Bradley’s de facto deputy, Matthew Hancock, as minister of state with a focus
on digital innovation.
As the corporation’s new regulator,
Ofcom will oversee competition questions. But there are indications that the
new ministers will be keen to ensure
that Ofcom is rigorous in doing so.
“Hancock’s commitment to spur on
digital innovation [an area he championed at the Treasury] means that he
has grounds to look out for outcomes
that end up stymying innovation or
competition,” says an official. “Ed
Vaizey [his Cameronian predecessor]
saw the job as persuading the culture
establishment that not all Tories were
out-of-date philistines. Hancock is a
tougher, more driven character with a
determination to make his mark on
the digital economy, and that can rub
up against the interests of the BBC.”
But Hancock will be constrained by
the realities of May’s position. A small
Commons majority, plus the combination of running Brexit wars and the
personality of his boss make it unlikely
that he will rock the boat.
A friend of Bradley says: “She is
ambitious enough to be wary of the
fate of previous incumbents Maria
Miller or Sajid Javid, neither of whom
left much of a mark, but ambitious
enough to know that the job can be a
stepping stone to greater things.”
Remember Jeremy Hunt, elevated
from culture secretary in 2012 to health
secretary. And, ­crucially, that the PM
will always take Karen Bradley’s call.
Anne McElvoy is senior editor
at The Economist.

15

The Wintershall Players
perform ‘The Passion
of Jesus’ on Good
Friday in Trafalgar
Square, April 2014

‘M

y generation grew
up thinking that
religion was completely marginal
to British life,
which, as for the
rest of the world, has been proved
more and more wrong,” historian
Simon Schama famously said.
In this, if in little else, Schama and
I have something in common. Born in
the same year, I was also carried along
on the wave of 1960s optimism which
assumed that everyone was basically
good, life was getting better for all, and
reason would triumph.
As a historian, and a Jew, Schama
knew this was an illusion, of course,
yet even he misread the importance
of faith in the modern world.

16

Religion

Roger Bolton argues
that broadcasters must
improve their coverage
of faith – or else miss
out on modernity’s
biggest story
When I became a BBC journalist,
I was encouraged to read books on, for
example, Ireland and the trade unions
and to learn about the City. No one
ever mentioned the Shia/Sunni split.
Indeed, when Ayatollah Khomeini

returned from exile to Iran in 1979,
I did not even know which branch of
Islam he belonged to or why it mattered so much (Shia, since you ask).
What followed his return was the
Iranian Revolution, the Iran-Iraq war
and just about everything that has
happened in the Middle East since.
Today, religious literacy is vital for
everyone involved in broadcasting.
Lyse Doucet, chief international
correspondent for BBC News, says this:
“Sadly, distortions of religious belief
and texts are used as political weapons
in many conflicts, as well as in clashes
over traditional beliefs and practices.
That requires us to know more about
the tenets of major religions and systems of belief, and to be able to assess
and analyse different interpretations.”

Getty Images

Why TV needs
religious literacy

In the Sunday Times, the journalist
AA Gill has written: “Religion has
never been more tangible in world
affairs and public life. Not having more
sensible and serious religious broadcasting isn’t modern, it’s a failure to
face modernity.”
In a keynote speech at the 2016
­Sandford St Martin Awards at Lambeth
Palace this June, the Archbishop of
Canterbury, Justin Welby, called on the
BBC to treat religion “with the same
seriousness as other genres such as
sport, politics, economics or drama”. He
went on: “The promotion of religious
literacy should be a specific duty for the
BBC across its broadcasting services.”
The BBC has six public purposes set
out by Royal Charter. For some of us,
the promotion of religious literacy
ought to be a seventh such purpose.
Such literacy is not only necessary
to understand the world beyond our
shores. Christianity made this country.
It is impossible to understand fully our
politics and our culture, painting,
sculpture, poetry and drama, indeed
our new Prime Minister, without
understanding the Christian faith.
And it impossible to understand
the country we are becoming without
understanding the beliefs of those who
have immigrated here. The 2011 census
recorded that there were 2.8 million
Muslims in Britain, or 4.4% of the population; those figures will have
increased in the past five years. For
many, perhaps most, Muslims, their
faith is the most important thing in
their lives. How must they regard journalists who know little of their most
cherished beliefs and who do not have
the knowledge to challenge those who
distort their faith?
So, how well are we broadcasters
doing? The picture is decidedly mixed.
There are some cracking programmes
being made, as the shortlist for this
year’s Sandford St Martin Awards
showed. Entries were welcomed from
news, current affairs, factual, arts,
music, drama, children’s and comedy
genres – as well as from teams producing specifically “religious” commissions. This year’s TV winner was
My Son the Jihadi, made by True Vision
Productions for Channel 4.
In 2011, Sally Evans made a devastating discovery: her son Thomas had left
their home in a Buckinghamshire village
and travelled to Somalia to join an Islamist terrorist group. The film charted,
with immense sensitivity, her subsequent attempts to understand what had

Television www.rts.org.uk September 2016

RELIGIOUS
LITERACY IS
VITAL FOR
EVERYONE
INVOLVED IN
BROADCASTING
happened to her son and to come to
terms with his death. Would it have
been better if he had never been born?
The Radio Times Faith Award went
to a very different sort of programme,
BBC One’s Call the Midwife, and the
Trustees’ Award to Joan Bakewell for
her lifelong commitment to ethical
inquiry in programmes such as Heart
of the Matter and The Ethics Committee,
which enabled her to explore, with
judicious impartiality, the most interesting ethical dilemmas of our age.
But if the quality is high, the volume
is getting lower.
Take Channel 4. According to Ofcom,
its spending on religious broadcasting
dropped from £49m in 2008 to £20m
in 2013 (the latest figures we have). This
period coincided with Channel 4’s
decisions to dispense with the role of
commissioning editor for religion and
to eliminate any religious programming quota.
At ITV, the position is even worse.
Spending on religious programme
commissions dropped from £40m in
2008 to £2m in 2013. Yes, £2m.
In 2015, according to Ofcom, spending by the PSBs on religious and ethics
programmes was £12m, down 6% on
2014. So much, therefore, depends on
our main public service broadcaster,
the BBC. How well is it doing? It makes
some good programmes, and has outstandingly well-informed journalists,

THE PROMOTION
OF RELIGIOUS
LITERACY
SHOULD BE A
SPECIFIC DUTY
FOR THE BBC
ACROSS ITS
BROADCASTING
SERVICES

such as Lyse Doucet and Ed Stourton.
But it seems to have little or no strategy, is in an organisational muddle and
seems to place religious broadcasting
well down its list of priorities.
This may be a harsh judgement, and
it would be wonderful if the BBC could
produce the facts to contradict it, but
consider the following, worrying,
evidence.
Ofcom described religious programming as one of several “immediate
issues” of concern in its July 2015
report “Public service in the internet
age”. The point was repeated in the
BBC’s own Charter review report of
September 2015, “British, bold, creative:
the BBC’s programmes and services in
the next Charter”.
But the 103-page corporation document made no further reference to
religion – the only programme genre
of “immediate issues” that got no
mention in the BBC’s proposals for
the next Charter period.
Aaqil Ahmed, officially the BBC’s
head of religion and ethics, has had
his commissioning power taken away
from him. TV religious programmes
are now commissioned by a non-­
specialist responsible for several other
genres, science, business and history.
BBC News has editors for a vast range
of subjects, including consumer affairs,
the arts, sport, politics, economics and a
host of others. Religion does not have
such a senior figure able to influence
editorial policy, and its correspondent
has to make do with a part-time producer, though that may change.
In the light of this apparent vacuum,
the Sandford St Martin Trust has been
trying to get answers from the BBC to
three key questions:
n Who in the BBC will take overall
responsibility for the range, quality
and quantity of religious coverage?
n Are BBC commissioners and programme-makers issued with specific
objectives or goals to help ensure
informed coverage of the range of religious beliefs and practices in the UK?
n Regarding BBC news, does the BBC
agree that, in order for good journalism
to flourish in this sensitive but crucial
area, the same resources and expertise
are necessary as in other areas? If so,
why is there no editor for religion?
Perhaps the BBC has detailed
answers to these questions. If so,
could it let us know?
Roger Bolton is a broadcaster and a
trustee of the Sandford St Martin Trust.

17

Sky

Drama’s
different
voice
Self-effacing and jokey, Sky’s Anne Mensah is an unusual TV
executive. Andrew Billen finds out what makes her so unique

W

hen Anne
Mensah left the
BBC five years
ago to become
Sky’s drama
head, the
broadcaster’s Chief Executive, Jeremy
Darroch, made one stipulation:
“Whatever you do, don’t do the same.
People can get the same for free.”
“And that was the most liberating
thing anybody could say,” enthuses
Mensah. We are talking in a meeting
room somewhere in the Sky HQ in
Osterley, west London. Her commissioning team could comfortably join
us because there are just six of them.
This may be a healthy indication that
ideas here are not imposed from
above, on the whim of a controller, but
percolate in from outside. Mensah goes
so far as to say: “One reason that our
way is not to imprint on creatives is
because my taste is terrible.”

18

Admittedly, Mensah is one of the
most jokey, self-effacing executives I
have interviewed for these pages, and,
even more winningly, this is in the
context of admitting to loving Sapphire
& Steel as a child. Even so…
“There is something,” she says,
“about putting the customer first that
keeps you honest. It isn’t about
whether my mum likes it, or whether
critics like it, or whether the industry
thinks I’m good. It really does come
down to: are you doing something that
somebody else, who doesn’t know you,
and therefore has no vested interest,
thinks is worth paying for?”
She says that, for Sky, it is not about
the total numbers a show gets, but how
excitedly those who do watch talk
about it. The BBC has its audience
appreciation index. Sky obsesses over
its subscribers’ “passion scores”.
If Darroch was looking for a passion
score of near 100% in his creative

team, he found it in Mensah, a
44-year-old graduate from ITV, the
indie sector and a decade at the BBC.
She may even be topping that score
when she describes to me her forthcoming Sky 1 drama Britannia, set at the
time of the Roman invasion. It will, she
promises, encapsulate the idea of
“innovation in the mainstream”.
It is only, however, when she reveals
who is writing it that I share her
excitement. It is Jez Butterworth. No
one has persuaded the author of Jerusalem, the best British play of this century, to write for television for 20 years.
To qualify this a little, Britannia was not
his idea; he came aboard later. Still,
Mensah says, we shall hear his voice.
“He’s hugely big-brained. He just
brings energy and a sense of excitement.” We shall witness, she promises,
a collision between a modern world
and a religiously based world, and we
shall note the parallels with today.

Television www.rts.org.uk September 2016

WE DON’T
MAKE AS MUCH
AS OTHER
CHANNELS
ON PURPOSE,
BECAUSE EVERY
SINGLE THING WE
LOVE TO DEATH

The Last Panthers
and originates in Britain, and doesn’t
look like old stars cashing in.”
“Why am I not devastated?” Mensah
asks. “Because it’s just not what we’re
trying to do. What I’m realising is that
we really are playing a different game.”
Perhaps her childhood in south London got her used to being different. Her
mother is a Canadian teacher, her late
father an accountant from Ghana. They
met while her mother was teaching for
VSO in Ghana. “I am a little bit global,
me,” Anne says. “They sort of picked a
country that was halfway between.” It
was a happy home.
“The thing about my childhood is that,
if you grow up in a family where neither
parent was born in the UK, your references are slightly different. Everyone
else will go, ‘I grew up reading Tolkien’,
whereas I can tell you a lot about Anne
of Green Gables [the Canadian classic].”
She is one of an embarrassingly
small number of black women in a top

Sky

Britannia, she thinks, would not fit
anywhere on the BBC. This is a big
claim and it is worth asking if it means
much, particularly given that the current BBC mantra is also distinctiveness.
Mensah’s examples of distinctiveness
at Sky are sometimes as disputable as
the BBC’s. She speaks of The Enfield
Haunting in May 2015 succeeding at a
time when “nobody else was doing
ghost stories”. In fact, BBC One’s
Remember Me had been broadcast only
five months earlier. Enjoyable though
Agatha Raisin has been on Sky 1, could
it not have sat as happily on ITV? “I
definitely think it’s spikier than Midsomer Murders,” she retorts.
Does she think it curious that Butter­
worth has chosen to write a state-­
of-the-nation TV show for Sky, rather
than for the national broadcaster?
“I would say, ‘Why not Sky subscribers?’ It will obviously go out simultaneously in the UK, Italy and Germany
and, at that point, you’re talking to a
huge audience. It will also go out in
America at the same time on Amazon,
so it has a huge range.”
Sky’s native dramas, since she
joined, have had their highs and their
lows. Well promoted, they often begin
with “record” overnight ratings and
then taper off. The big-budget Fortitude,
for instance, began in 2015 with
700,000 watching live but was seen
by fewer than half that number three
weeks on.
The much less grand Enfield Haunting,
the same year on Living (its last
non-acquired drama), beat it with
nearly 900,000.
More importantly, people catch up
with Sky dramas much more than they
do with terrestrial dramas. Haunting
reached a further 1.1 million for its consolidated audience. The premier of The
Last Panthers on Sky Atlantic last autumn
attracted only 228,000 but accumulated
nearly 700,000 on catch-up and recordings. Mind you, by week 2 live viewing
had halved.
And, mind you again, the debut of
the fifth season of Game of Thrones on
Atlantic was watched by 1.7 million
viewers. Even Mensah, for whom it is
not about the numbers, does not pretend that if her British dramas reached
such numbers she would lament that
she wanted “a more niche audience”.
I quote AA Gill in the Sunday Times on
the (now-renewed) thriller The Five:
“The real suspense surrounds when
Sky is going to manage to make something that is a destination TV moment,

job in UK television and actually the
only BAME (black, Asian or minority
ethnic) member of her own team.
But that, she adds, is because Danny
Takhar left to write and Madonna Baptiste went on to produce the Sky 1
show Stan Lee’s Lucky Man.
Her department has a clear target
that 20% of writers on a multi-­authored
series should be BAME, plus 20% of
the cast, and at least one head of a key
department.
“I am incredibly lucky. I mean, God,
obviously there are issues around skin
colour, but I also think there’s issues
round class and opportunity,” she says.
That said, the Mensahs were not well
off. Although her sister, who is 10 years
younger, went to a private school, Anne
went to Sedgehill, a comp in Catford,
south London. Television became her
“friend”: Dallas, The A-Team and, yes,
Sapphire & Steel. Her mother and she
cried with laughter at It’ll Be Alright on
the Night. The future BBC executive was
learning to be totally “un-snobbish”
about television – not that this prevented her making short films at school
of the “angsty teen” genre.
She graduated from Exeter University
with a first in American and Commonwealth arts. There at the same time was
Piers Wenger, the new head of drama at
the BBC. Midway through university,
she took off to UCLA in California, a
year that convinced her that there were
many more talented directors than her.
Back at Exeter, her tutors nevertheless
implored her to apply for a management traineeship at Carlton TV.
At the London ITV company, she
quickly became script editor for the
late-night soap London Bridge, observing its commercial and creative logic.
By 26, quite remarkably, she was Managing Director of Noel Gay Television
during its Red Dwarf years. She sold The
Fear, a series of ghost stories, to BBC
Choice and was associate producer on
Windrush, which took the Documentary
Series prize at the 1998 RTS Programme Awards.
Her parents must have been incredibly proud? “My dad asked when I was
going to go back and do my MBA,” she
deadpans.
She joined Brighter Pictures, made
Cruel Summer, a reality game show for
teens, and joined the BBC and its tiresomely named “Fiction Lab” in 2001.
She rose quickly, becoming, in 2006,
head of TV drama for BBC Scotland. In
Glasgow, she met her husband, the TV
director Marcus Harben (they have �

19

Mensah’s smart
moves to date
Anne Mensah, head of drama, Sky
Entertainment
Born 6 June 1972
Brought up Lewisham, south
London
Parents Father, a Ghanaian
accountant; mother, a Canadian
teacher
Married to Marcus Harben,
­producer-director; they have two
children
Education Sedgehill School, Catford, London; Exeter University, BA
(first); UCLA, graduate film production major

Triumphs before Sky Windrush;
Waterloo Road, Wallander for the
BBC – ‘everything beginning with W’
Triumphs at Sky The Enfield
Haunting, Fortitude, The Last
Panthers
Triumphs (or not) to come Britannia,
Guerrilla, starring Idris Elba, Riviera
Disaster Sky 1’s Critical. Ironically,
it was a critical hit, but she concedes it may have worked better
on Sky Atlantic
Watching Billions, Inside Amy
Schumer, Brief Encounters
Most influential author Enid Blyton
– ‘There’s a construction to her
books that is almost perfect in
terms of the audience’
Hobbies Board games – but no
one wants to play against her
because she is ‘too competitive’.

20

The Enfield Haunting
� two children, a boy and a girl, aged
three and two).
Returning south, she was appointed
head of independent drama at the
BBC. Within a decade, she had witnessed the renaissance of BBC drama.
“I got to work with Jane [Tranter],
watching the transition when she
launched Spooks and Auf Wiedersehen,
Pet, that sudden flourishing. Greg
Dyke gave them £50m extra, I think,
and it was incredible to see that many
clever people putting their minds to
it. To be honest, they’ve never come
down from there. They’ve only gone
up. The BBC is an incredible space.”
So why did she leave? “Because
­Stuart [Murphy] said, ‘Do you want to
come to Sky?’ I’d been at the BBC for
10 years and he said, ‘We’re having a
really good laugh here’. And then
Sophie Turner-Laing rang me when
I was on gardening leave and said,
‘We’re going to put £600m into original content.’ I was like, ‘Oh wow, OK,
that changes everything.’”
It has, too. Sky drama is a source of
constant interest and some frustration. As a critic, I love Mensah’s flair
and her receptiveness to fresh ideas,
but I do wonder whether Sky has the
inclination or the cash to make the
critical mass of domestic drama from
which a breakout hit might emerge.
About budgets, she says, Sky never
comments.

Sky

1994 Script editor on London
Bridge, Carlton TV
1996 Management trainee, Noel
Gay Television
1998 Managing Director, Noel Gay
2000 Freelance development
producer, Brighter Pictures
2001 BBC Fiction Lab, rising to
script executive, then development executive and executive
producer, drama
2006 Head of TV drama, BBC
Scotland
2009 Head of independent drama,
BBC
2011 Head of drama Sky. Her first
commission was The Smoke,
which she axed after one season

Her department makes five series
a year each for Sky 1 and Atlantic; they
just about cover 50 weeks. “We don’t
make as much as other channels on
purpose, because every single thing we
love to death. That’s the whole point.”
Has Sky drama had its breakthrough
moment yet? “Probably. We’ve had the
breakthrough for our customers: Fortitude, biggest audience on Sky Atlantic
ever; Lucky Man, biggest audience on
Sky 1 ever; Enfield Haunting, biggest
audience on Living ever for original
shows. We’ve had big success. I think
there’s still room to grow. We haven’t
had that point where you become part
of the national conversation.”
That is an honest assessment. Our
conversation comes back to the biggest drama on Sky: a cult, a phenomenon, a metaphor for Westminster and
Capitol Hill, an international conversation – and nothing to do with her.
“I mean, obviously, everybody
would want that many people talking
about their show globally,” she says,
“but was that the ambition the makers went in with? I think all you can
do is be as ambitious as you can, and
try and get out of the way of creatives
so they can do what they want to do.
“I’m going to sound like a really bad
1980s movie now. If you build it, they
will come. I really, genuinely believe
that. I trust our customers. If it’s good,
they’ll come.”

September 2016 www.rts.org.uk Television

OUR FRIEND IN THE

NORTH

Television www.rts.org.uk September 2016

Graeme Thompson
sees the next
generation of TV
professionals hard
at work on two
local drama shoots

Paul Hampartsoumian

A

s if we don’t have
enough drama in
our lives right now,
I have to welcome
the fact that so
much of the TV
variety is being
filmed here in North East England.
I dropped in on the set for CBBC’s
special-effects-laden thriller Wolfblood,
at a disused office block in North
Shields, and of ITV’s long-running
whodunnit Vera, filmed at old shipping buildings on the River Tyne.
It’s always fascinating to see behind
the scenes as designers and lighting
directors transform abandoned floor
space into an authentic provincial
police station or – in the case of Wolfblood – the headquarters of a group of
werewolves.
Equally rewarding – for me, at least
– was running into University of
Sunderland media graduates working
as sound recordists, script supervisors,
production secretaries and trainee
crew. Meeting them on set reminded
me why universities who invest in
media and creative industries education have such a transformational
impact on the next generation of TV
professionals.
These are young people at the start
of their careers whose relatives have
no links to television and, in many
cases, are the first in their family to
have gone to university.
There is a view – sadly prevalent in
Whitehall – that studying broadcast
media production, journalism, design
and animation is a risky choice for
young people because of apparently
poor job prospects.
Much better, say the experts, to opt
for STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering and mathematics)
and medicine.
The latest graduate employment
survey by the Higher Education Statistics Agency confirms that medical,

dentistry and veterinary graduates are
top of the league when it comes to
getting jobs after university – 93% of
them are in work within six months.
But wait: maths graduates fare less
well – just 56% manage to land jobs
in the same period.
So what of those graduating from
media, communications, design and
creative arts? Happily, the survey
reveals that eight out of 10 media graduates are in work within six months
of leaving university. And it’s a similar
picture in arts and design. Unemployment in this group is 7%, compared
with 10% in computer science.
But the reality doesn’t easily displace the myth: media and arts continue to be seen as “soft” subjects that
attract the same £9,000 tuition fees as
“solid” engineering and law.
Parents, teachers, careers advisors
and government policy-makers would

do well to eavesdrop on students juggling assignments, placements, showcase events and research alongside
seminars and tutorials, before concluding that arts and media are “soft”.
I had the privilege over the summer of sifting through more than
100 applications for RTS Production
Bursaries. This year, the scheme is
awarding cash and mentoring to
20 undergraduates from challenging
backgrounds who want to study
­TV-related media and journalism.
The extraordinary commitment and
passion of the candidates is humbling.
Many had provided links to showreels
created at home or in the classroom,
by themselves or with friends.
Our selection panel was treated to
drama, documentary and animation
highlighting their skills in scripting,
presenting, directing, camerawork
and post-production. And we read
glowing testimonials from teachers.
All the applicants had come from
poorer backgrounds and represented
every corner of the country. Many had
overcome family tragedy, illness and
other setbacks to complete A levels
and pursue their passion for TV.
They had a lot in common with the
graduates I met on Vera and Wolfblood:
a strong work ethic and an understanding that what you achieve in the
classroom can be elevated by the
effort you make and the opportunities
you grab beyond the timetable.
Good luck to those that we selected
for the bursaries. I hope we’ve chosen
well. They join 40 other bursary
recipients from the past two years.
And to the ones we couldn’t include,
I predict that their success after leaving
university will provide further evidence of the brilliant careers awaiting
graduates with a flair for production
and storytelling.
Graeme Thompson is Pro Vice-Chancellor
at the University of Sunderland.

21

T

High-flyer
lands at C4
Charles Gurassa’s business credentials are
beyond question, says Maggie Brown. But
will he succeed as Channel 4’s chair?

22

Channel 4

Channel 4

here is never any
shortage of top-quality
candidates competing to
land the job of chairing
Channel 4, but Ofcom
looks to have played a
shrewd hand by appointing an
unsullied newcomer to this key role.
Businessman Charles Gurassa is
personable and speaks calmly and
quietly. He has none of the overriding
self-importance common to those as
successful as this veteran of the travel
industry and several bruising corporate battles.
Gurassa, who celebrated his 60th
birthday in February, was appointed
as the seventh Chairman of Channel 4
in January. Fears that he was picked
solely to facilitate a sale of the company have evaporated – although its
future as a publicly owned broadcaster
remains uncertain under the current
Government.
The doubts that linger over his
appointment are whether he is a sufficiently heavyweight public figure to
fight for the channel’s interests in the
brutal Westminster world.
A previous defender of Channel 4
said: “He is clever, and the airline
industry is always very, very political.
But is he well connected enough and a
canny political operator in a sector like
broadcasting where, unlike Michael
Grade, he doesn’t know anyone?”
The indications so far are that
Gurassa is settling well in Horseferry
Road. His relationship with CEO David
Abraham is believed to be good and he
seems to be adopting the role of a
constructive critic who can encourage
creative ambition.
Until 2003, when he retired from
full-time executive roles, Gurassa’s
career was spent primarily in the travel
and tourism industries, and, as Deputy
Chair of easyJet, he is still linked to the
sector. In the airline’s founder, Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou, he is used to dealing
with a restless shareholder.
The central issue for Gurassa and
Channel 4 is the sapping uncertainty

HE IS CLEVER, AND THE AIRLINE
INDUSTRY IS ALWAYS VERY,
VERY POLITICAL, BUT IS HE
WELL CONNECTED ENOUGH?
regarding its future ownership and
business model. This unresolved policy
issue is entering a second year and
inflaming the UK’s independent production sector.
The May Government has opened a
new chapter, installing Karen Bradley
and Matt Hancock at the Department
for Culture, Media and Sport – though
Hancock worked with the previous
culture secretary, John Whittingdale,
considering options for privatising
Channel 4.
Lord Burns, Gurassa’s predecessor
and a Whitehall insider, made a misjudged intervention during 2015 with
his plan to turn Channel 4 into a coupon-paying mutual company. The idea
failed to gain traction and, arguably,
fanned the privatisation case.
In fact, Gurassa is not without Westminster connections: he knows Lord
Best, Chair of the House of Lords Communications Committee. In July, the
committee published a hearty dismissal of the case for privatisation.
Best told Television: “We found him
[Gurassa] fiercely opposed to privatisation. He was extremely impressive.”
An observer at the Westminster Media
Forum in mid-July said: “[Gurassa] is
more energetic than Burns, not so safety
first. He wants to spend some of Channel 4’s cash pile. And, in age, he is far
closer to David [Abraham], who is 53”.
At the Culture, Media and Sport
Committee hearing in June, which
examined Channel 4’s 2015 annual
report, Gurassa reiterated that, overall,
he remained “very impressed” by the
broadcaster. He said it was “pretty well
run” but voiced concern over the lack
of succession planning (Abraham has
led Channel 4 since May 2010).
Asked whether, given C4’s healthy
reserves, it could return a dividend to
the Treasury, he stressed the need for it
to use its money prudently. He said the
channel was examining how it could
use its resources to “deliver our remit
even better”, to increase its support to
the UK’s creative industries and, thirdly,
to up its investment in digital.

Television www.rts.org.uk September 2016

Despite the possibility of a post-Brexit
recession, the new Chairman believes
that Channel 4 needs to be less financially cautious. The broadcaster holds
cash reserves worth more than £200m,
a £100m freehold central London HQ
and the ability to borrow up to £200m.
He talks of its “brilliant” flexible
business model, comparing favourably
its use of external contractors to supply programmes with the heavy running costs of airlines, which have
aeroplanes sitting on the tarmac in
need of servicing, not always flying.
Gurassa gained his first business
credentials reading economics at the
University of York, after a childhood
in north London, where he attended
Christ’s College, a boys’ grammar
school in Finchley. His unusual surname derives from a French forebear
who married a Londoner after the First
World War. “We’re on the World Wildlife
Fund’s endangered species,” he jokes.
He joined Thomas Cook as a graduate
trainee in 1978 and, as general manager
of retail, travelled to the US, Hong Kong
and mainland China. He took an MBA
in Hong Kong, where he was the only
Englishman alongside nine Chinese.
“[A] fantastic experience, I have a deep
affection for China,” he says.
Hong Kong also gave Gurassa a brush
with cable television: he presented six
Thomas Cook-sponsored holiday shows,
in the vein of Wish You Were Here…?
In 1989, in his early thirties, Gurassa
was headhunted by British Airways;
there he became head of worldwide
sales and, later, its director of passenger and cargo.
A decade on, he became CEO of
Thomson Travel Group, assisting with
its sale to the German Preussag company, rather than allowing it to fall to
a hostile bid from Lufthansa. With the
business rebranded as TUI and now
living in Hanover, Gurassa chaired its
European division.
In 2003, buttressed by a bonus, he
decided to pursue a portfolio career,
feeling this would better suit family life.
His experience since then has been

impressive and varied, with work
commitments that include not-forprofit and charity posts as well as
commercial activities.
“I always think we’ve been put on
earth to make it a bit better,” he says.
“That was the zeitgeist of growing up
in the 1960s in London.” He served
at the National Trust in roles that
included being Deputy Chair for nine
and a half years.
Fiona Reynolds, BBC non-executive
director and former NT Director General, has said of him: “I loved working
with Charles… he was incisive, clear,
constructively challenging and passionately committed to the cause.”
He continues to sit on the board of
English Heritage and is working to
establish the UK’s first Migration
Museum.
Gurassa was Chair of Virgin Mobile
when it was sold to NTL in 2006. He
also chaired Lovefilm before it became
Amazon Prime.
Less happily, he is the senior independent director at Merlin Entertainments, listed on the stock exchange in
2013, but engulfed in compensation
proceedings following the crash of the
Alton Towers ride last year.
He now splits his time between a
home in Notting Hill and holiday place
near Lucca, Tuscany, where he cultivates a small vineyard.
His Channel 4 appointment surprised
everyone, including the broadcaster’s
board. So far, he has sidestepped questions from MPs about whether he
would resign if the Government chose
to back privatisation. One reason for
this is almost certainly because, since
Channel 4’s constitution is based in
statute, change would not be achieved
quickly.
“I knew [Channel 4] as a consumer,”
he says. “It matters hugely, [as] an
important, different voice.”
Whatever the future for the broadcaster, Abraham is now in his seventh
year as its CEO. At some point, Charles
Gurassa will be the person who hires
Abraham’s successor.

23

The new
game in
town

T

here has never been
a better time to own a
­second-tier sports event.
While first-tier contracts
generate mountains of
cash – such as the threeyear, £5.14bn deal for the English Premier League – it is the market for
second-tier sports rights that is currently the most dynamic.
With darts on Dave, the Henley
Royal Regatta on YouTube and talk of a
Netflix for sports, there are many more
ways to deliver live sport to a broadcast audience than the UK’s two paysports providers and their terrestrial
rivals. Second-tier sports rights holders
have a new kind of leverage, too, with
potentially large, global audiences
available online on platforms such as
Facebook Live.
This year witnessed a major breakthrough with a new channel entering
the sports arena. UKTV’s Dave had
been mulling over an expansion into
sport when former world heavyweight
boxing champion David Haye offered
the channel his comeback fight in
January.

24

Television sport

From YouTube to
UKTV, sports fans
are watching a huge
range of second-tier
sports events for free.
Ross Biddiscombe
investigates
An astonishing peak viewing audience of over 3 million (more than four
times Dave’s best-rating entertainment
­programme) prompted the channel to
look at other sports.
A second Haye fight, broadcast on
Dave in May, delivered a peak audience of 2.5 million. This was followed
by the British Darts Organisation’s
World Trophy event and Caribbean
Premier League cricket.
The original sports opportunity
caught the broadcaster by surprise.

“We were contacted about five weeks
before the fight,” says Richard Watsham,
UKTV’s director of commissioning.
“The call happened to coincide with
our own thoughts about exploring
doing live sport on Dave.
“The Haye camp wanted a free-to-air
partner that would give the fight an
entertaining coverage style. That fitted
in with our own ideas.”
Haye also knew that, by avoiding the
sports pay-TV options (his earlier fights
were shown on Sky Sports Box Office),
he was likely to attract a larger audience for a fight that, frankly, was never
going to be on everyone’s radar.
The boxer said at the time: “Hopefully, my fights will keep being free for
people to watch. I want to keep building the viewing figures and, obviously,
get more sponsorship. The more the
viewing figures climb, the more sponsorship gets involved and the less you
rely on subscriptions.”
Second-tier rights owners have four
basic broadcast options:
n Follow the well-worn path to a
sports pay-TV channel, with relatively
low audiences but plenty of repeat

The International Judo Federation Paris
Grand Slam was broadcast by French
channel L’Equipe 21
showings and almost certainly no
rights fee
n A similar no-money deal with a
free-to-air terrestrial channel that
might deliver a larger audience, but
fewer repeat broadcasts
n A more adventurous partnership with
an online platform such as YouTube,
which offers a potentially big, global
audience and a share of advertising; or
n A mix of all three of the above.
Stephen Nuttall, senior director of
YouTube EMEA, says the question for
second-tier sports rights holders is
this: why would they not have a channel on his platform?
“These days, YouTube is an option
for rights holders large and small. We
showed the Champions League and
Europa League finals this year even
though BT Sport was screening them
as well. But, then, we also got the Henley Royal Regatta on screen for the first
time in 33 years,” he says.
The coverage of Henley rowing in
2015 was a coup for YouTube. More­
over, thanks to the Henley Rowing
Club committee paying many thousands of pounds to producer Sunset+

Television www.rts.org.uk September 2016

L’Equipe 21

WE ARE ALL
ABOUT PUTTING
THE FAN IN
CONTROL:
WATCHING THE
SPORTS THEY
LOVE, ON THE
DEVICE OF
THEIR CHOICE

Vine for such a high-quality production, this year’s competition was
broadcast simultaneously on BT Sport.
“We have a partnership team that
works with a rights holder and also
with broadcasters,” explains Nuttall.
“That way, there is an option for events
to work on a number of platforms.
We’re fine with that.”
Terrestrial networks such as the BBC
and ITV are also innovating. Having
lost almost all the crown jewels of
sport, the BBC is turning to second-tier
sports such as the triathlon or swimming for its quota of live action, especially following the November 2015
announcement of a £35m cut in its
sports-rights budget.
Under its director of sport, Barbara
Slater, the BBC is promoting these sports
to new and potentially large audiences.
“Competition for sports rights is
increasing all the time,” she says. “We
know how highly rights holders value
the BBC’s huge reach. In 2015, while
only accounting for 2% of all TV sports
hours on UK television, we delivered a
staggering 37% of all the viewing.”
The BBC and ITV can also offer second-tier rights holders valuable audiences via their online services. This
summer, the BBC ran live streaming
trials with British ice hockey and basketball matches, while ITV4 once again
live streamed the Tour de France. The
terrestrials’ websites are also attractive
to second-tier sports: the BBC Sports
website, for example, attracts 20 million unique users per week.
Second-tier sports rights holders
naturally want big numbers of committed viewers. This is increasingly
pushing them to online platforms.
Richard Ayers, CEO of leading European digital sports consultancy Seven
League, says: “An engaged audience is
what sponsors and the sports themselves want.… Surfing competitions
can’t always start when a normal programming schedule wants them to
because of the conditions in the ocean.
An online site can alert fans virally and
gather a large core audience very
quickly.”
Pay-TV giants Sky Sports and BT
Sport, meanwhile, will never abandon
second-tier sports: they have hundreds
of hours of airtime to fill.
Take sports such as speedway on
Sky Sports or UFC mixed martial arts
on BT Sport: the pay-channels can
supply lots of on-air promotion and
razzmatazz, and even some primetime
slots. Sky also has Now TV, the online

service that it launched in 2012, to help
grow audiences.
While the rights holders will continue
to look for income from sponsors or
perhaps via a sports federation, the
options for building audiences and
revenues are expanding. Facebook Live
formally launched this spring. It has
already captured the imagination of the
sports world. It works with video production and publishing platforms such
as Grabyo.
Gareth Capon, CEO of Grabyo, says
that his clients include tier-one sports
rights holders, such as Spain’s La Liga
football champions Real Madrid. The
club uses the online streaming option
as a supplementary service: it showed
the post-game Champions League
celebrations online this spring.
By contrast, Formula E motor racing
(for electric cars) has used Facebook
Live as its primary broadcast option.
“There are 30 million people accessing
Facebook every day in the UK alone,”
says Capon. “A sport like Formula E
loves those numbers – and the fact that
social media is a place that promotes
notification and discovery of events.”
This shows how the pendulum of
power for second-tier sports is drifting
towards the holder, rather than the
broadcaster – and that a “Netflix for
sport” concept is not too far away.
Indeed, the UK-based media company Perform Group has already had
that tag attached to its open-internet
service DAZN, which it launched last
month. The service is already available
in Germany, Austria, Switzerland and
Japan.
DAZN offers live coverage of the
English Premier League, Germany’s
Bundesliga and Spain’s La Liga plus
more than 10,000 other live sporting
events. These range from handball to
darts. The service is available across any
connected device for a monthly fee.
“We are all about putting the fan in
control: watching the sports they love,
on the device of their choice with one
simple, affordable price and no longterm contract,” says John Gleasure,
Perform’s chief commercial officer.
The DAZN business model rewards
rights holders who drive the subscriber
base and viewing levels. In other
words, the deeper the penetration of
a particular sport on DAZN, the more
money that rights holders receive.
The growing choice enjoyed by
second-­tier sports, from triathlon to
taekwondo, means this area of broadcasting is a whole new ball game.

25

IBC preview

Gordon Jamieson looks
at how a succession
of small steps has
transformed the
Amsterdam tech-fest

A

s the International Broad­­casting Convention (IBC)
approaches its 50th year,
the annual conference
and trade exhibition is
evolving at the same
dizzy speed as the industry it serves.
IBC’s metamorphosis from 500 delegates and three dozen vendors in a
corner of a London hotel in 1967 to
55,000 attendees and 1,600 exhibitors
in Amsterdam’s sprawling RAI centre
is more than simply one of scale.
The organisers have made increasing
efforts to curate and integrate the
technological developments on the
show floor with the themes being
debated in the conference programme.
Jostling for our attention are the big,
highly visible advances, such as
immersive virtual reality, Ultra-HDTV
and drones. But the hesitant migration
of the broadcasting industry towards
an internet-protocol (IP) infrastructure
is every bit as revolutionary as the shift
from standard-definition pictures to
HDTV and now to Ultra-HDTV.
IP is inherently far more flexible and
cost-effective – but not necessarily as
reliable as the technologies that currently connect each part of the production and transmission chain. A
wholesale, overnight switchover is
simply not feasible, so television companies need each new deployment of
IP connectivity to work reliably within
their existing infrastructure.
IBC is addressing this with an IP
Interoperability Zone, at the heart of
which is a live, IP-connected studio
managed by Belgian broadcaster VRT
and the European Broadcasting Union,
together with 12 technology suppliers.
In all, some 30 companies are demonstrating their IP products in the zone.
Visitors will be encouraged to verify
for themselves how the studio set-up
handles signal timing and transport,
as well as discussing case studies with
vendors. “It will be a showcase for
the reality of the technology, and a

26

demonstration that the industry is
converging on a common roadmap,”
says Michael Cronk, Grass Valley VP
of core technology.
IP and interoperability will also be
prominent in the IBC Content Everywhere area and conference sessions.
Content Everywhere is one of IBC’s
most heavily curated strands, with the
emphasis firmly on connected devices,
social media, personalisation and
cloud services, rather than on the
­traditional broadcast environment.
“Attendees tell us that the rate of
change in their industry is accelerating,
and that the amount of information
they are confronted with about new
technologies is vast and growing – and
they say they need it curated for them,”
says IBC Chair Tim Richards. “We are
trusted as an honest and reliable provider of business information.”
Content Everywhere has been a
proving ground for this approach to
curation. IBC originally intended to use
the Content Everywhere brand to
expand its geographical range, with
plans for regular shows in the Middle

East and Latin America. Dismal economic conditions in those regions
quashed that ambition. But the experience of putting on a single show in
Dubai early last year paid dividends,
with a healthy increase in Middle Eastern visitors to IBC last September.
“IBC is not a European show per se:
we attract manufacturers, speakers and
visitors from all over the world. Increasingly, it is a very broad church that we
are trying to serve,” says Richards.
There was a time when CEOs didn’t
go to IBC: instead, the most senior
visitors were chief technology officers
and their senior engineers pushing
shopping trollies around what was
effectively a specialist supermarket.
IBC’s Leaders Summit may have
started off as something of a crèche for
CEOs in the midst of what was still
quite a hardware-focussed market, but
it has been a very successful part of the
convention’s evolution.
“Four years ago,” says IBC’s CEO,
Michael Crimp, “I’m not sure that WPP’s
Sir Martin Sorrell would have seen IBC
as a natural place to speak or to inform

One giant
leap for
broadcasting
himself by speaking to other attendees.
We are pleased that thought leaders
who want to talk about the business of
media know that there will now be an
audience here for their ideas.”
This year, there will be sessions on
Eurosport’s strategy to sign up 1 million
open-internet subscribers by 2017, and
on Spotify’s experience of changing the
way audiences consume music. IBM
Global Business Services will present
empirical research on the changing
shape of television. But, as with previous summits, the debate will remain
behind closed doors and the guest list
will remain select, with no more than
150 media chieftains in attendance.
Speakers this year include: Alex
Green, Managing Director of Amazon
Video; Dominique Delport, Chair of
Havas Media Group; Gidon Katz, Managing Director of Now TV; and Susanna
Dinnage, Managing Director of Discovery Networks UK & Ireland.
IBC’s Future Zone is a formal part
of the Leaders Summit tour, as well a
popular destination for ordinary ticket
holders. “It is an opportunity to give

Television www.rts.org.uk September 2016

senior people pointers to the future so
that they can make informed strategic
decisions,” says Crimp.
On show will be ground-breaking
prototypes and proofs of concept from
18 of the world’s R&D labs. Among
them will be US manufacturer Sphericam. It will be demonstrating a fully
spherical, 360-degree camera that can
record Ultra-HDTV video at 60 frames
per second – then automatically stitch
the component pictures together and
live stream them to a smartphone,
tablet or VR headset. The company is
now accepting pre-orders for its $2,500
Sphericam 2 model.
The overarching trend toward
IP-based infrastructure and software
tools will also be on display in the IBC
Launch Pad area, where 23 first-time
exhibitors will be gathered.
“New companies sometimes find
themselves thrown into the deep end
without arm bands in this industry, and
they are up against companies that have
been exhibiting at IBC for 50 years,” says
Crimp. In return for providing marketing assistance – and a degree of

Nasa

Out of this world: Nasa TV will make
a presentation at this year’s IBC

hand-­holding – to these start-ups, IBC
can push the range of products on
show that little bit further towards the
bleeding edge. This, in turn, widens the
appeal of the exhibition.
Another feature designed both to
bring in new punters and demonstrate
to regular attendees how the boundaries
of “television” are become ever more
porous is Hackfest. IBC describes Hackfest, now in its second year, as a creative
playground for software developers,
designers and entrepreneurs. Around
100 of them have been invited to spend
36 hours brainstorming apps or ideas for
discovering or sharing content in education, entertainment or sport.
To an extent, Hackfest is an unashamed pitch to bring in young, cool
celebrities but, as Richards points out,
app development “is part of our new
reality, so it is important that we expose
people in the more traditional parts
of the content business to this way
of working. It is also about cross-­
fertilisation.” At least some of the
­companies attending IBC must agree,
because several of last year’s hackers
were offered jobs on the strength of
their performance.
Perhaps the most spectacular event
at this year’s IBC will be a presentation
by Nasa – the space agency has been a
ground-breaking TV producer since its
inception. Carlos Fontanot, imagery
manager for the International Space
Station, and Kelly Humphries, the
voice of mission control for more than
50 shuttle missions, will talk delegates
through six decades of space exploration video.
Multi-Oscar-winning director Ang
Lee, famous for his innovative uses
of new production technologies, will
deliver the Big Screen Keynote, using
clips from his latest film, Billy Lynn’s
Long Halftime Walk.
While such crowd-pleasers certainly
play a role in boosting visitor numbers,
getting potential buyers and sellers
together is still IBC’s raison d’être. And
where the tech fest can really add value
is the degree to which it can improve
attendees’ picture of where television is
headed before they shake on that deal.
Crimp is clear that “curation across
the whole of IBC is our next big step”
and that the organisation will have to
develop more in-house editorial
expertise in order to deliver useful
content all year round.
Future IBC delegates may be able to
extend their creative congress long after
their footsore week in Amsterdam.

27

RTS NEWS

Support for young film-makers

S

ometimes, the most
inspired images can
be created by chance,
suggested director
Eryl Huw Phillips during a
discussion with young
film-makers at this year’s
National Eisteddfod of Wales.
The “Directors of the
future” event was held in
early August at “Sinemaes”, a
cinema in a tepee on the
Eisteddfod field.
Sinemaes hosted 50 events
over eight days in a partnership that included RTS Wales,
Bafta Cymru, Film Hub Wales
and the National Screen and
Sound Archive of Wales.
Phillips began as an actor
but moved into producing
and directing. His credits
include S4C political drama
Byw Celwydd, BBC One comedy drama The Indian Doctor
and the 2012 film The Gospel
of Us, starring Michael Sheen.
He was talking to a fellow
panellist, 13-year-old Hedydd
Ioan, producer of the short
Bywyd, a winner at the Zoom

Actor Rhys Ifans supported many of the Eisteddfod events
Cymru International Youth
Film Festival in March, which
was shown during the event.

Phillips suggested that one
scene, showing a red pepper
being sliced, evoked images

of a botanic garden seen later
in the film, but Ioan admitted
that this was probably a
happy accident.
Both agreed, however, that
the best way to learn about
film-making was simply to
keep making films.
The other panellists, who
were also members of the
remarkable Nantlle Vale Film
Club in North Wales, were:
Begw Dafydd Roberts (11),
who worked on her own film
about an alien invasion; Cian
Dafydd Roberts (13) and
Gethin Cennin Williams (13).
The last two contributed to
the three short films shown
during the discussion.
The group has notched up
an impressive 11 awards and
nominations over the past
two years at youth film festivals. At this year’s Zoom
festival, Ioan took home two
first prizes and a second
place as well as the award for
the youngster showing the
most promise.
Hywel Wiliam and Tim Hartley

ONLINE at the RTS
n It was all change at the RTS
digital desk as we said a fond
farewell in July to Tim Dickens,
who has swapped the world of
telly and Twitter for the good life. I
am excited to follow in his footsteps, supported by online journalist Ed Gove and digital interns
Toby Hood and Holly Barrett.
n We’re gearing up for the RTS
London Conference this month,
where we will be live tweeting
from every session. You can find
information about the conference, including how to buy tickets, on our microsite at www.rts.
org.uk/LondonConference.

n Elsewhere on the site, Ed Gove
has broken down the new TV
licensing rules into handy bitesized chunks at www.rts.org.uk/
tvlicence.
n Toby Hood has been behind
the scenes to film at independent post-production facility
Halo Post in London’s Soho to
find out what goes on behind its
hi-tech doors. Managing Director Will Garbutt explains why
now is an exciting time to be
working in post-production, and
how Halo is trying to remain
competitive (www.rts.org.uk/
halo).

Television www.rts.org.uk September 2016

n We have also spoken to
documentary film-maker
Edward Watts about his
Grierson-shortlisted and RTS
Award-nominated film for ITN
Productions, Dispatches: Escape
from Isis. He explains that the
story of the captured Yazidi
women and their rescuers at
the heart of the film hit him
harder than any other doc he’d
worked on. In the feature, Watts
also talks about why he decided
to collaborate with the Middle
East charity Amar Foundation
to raise funds in the aftermath
of making the film (www.rts.org.
uk/EscapefromIsis).

Edward Watts
n The RTS website continues
to evolve and expand, and we
are always keen to hear about
stories we should be covering.
To get in touch, please email
pippa@rts.org.uk
Pippa Shawley

29

RTS NEWS

BBC Academy chief Joe Godwin

Midlands hosts
conference…

S

ixty delegates and
guest speakers gathered at the West
Midland Safari Park,
Worcestershire, in early July to
discuss diversity, digital skills
and production opportunities.
At the RTS Midlands Centre conference, Joe Godwin,
director of the BBC Academy
and BBC Birmingham, discussed training and apprenticeship schemes, as well as
the success of BBC Drama.

The diversity workshop
was chaired by former BBC
community affairs correspondent Barnie Choudhury,
and featured actor and
broadcaster Phina Oruche,
BBC head of business development Tommy Nagra and
Godwin.
Choudhury asked whether
diversity had been “highjacked by those who want
to stop creativity”, prompting
an impassioned debate.

Ian MacKenzie, Channel 4
nations and regions manager,
encouraged producers to
contact him so he could
make introductions and
increase production across
the region.
Colette Foster, the founder
of Birmingham-based factual
entertainment indie Full Fat
TV, was enthusiastic about
the future of television production in the Midlands.
The former Joint Managing
Director of Remarkable TV
has been responsible for some
of the most successful popular factual programmes on
television, including Channel 4’s Supersize vs Superskinny.
Des Tong, a producer and
presenter from Walsall-based
local-TV channel Big Centre
TV, talked about the region’s
newest broadcaster.
Naz Mantoo, audience
development manager at the
Edinburgh International
Television Festival, discussed
the development schemes
open to young people and
those new to the industry at
the festival.
BBC trainer Marc Settle
offered tips, and showcased
apps and gadgets for journalists and producers wanting
to get the most out of their
smartphones.
Dorothy Hobson

… and crowns child TV champs
n A team from Weobley
High School, Herefordshire,
has won Midlands Centre’s
competition for schools.
Billy the Bear, their idea
for a TV programme that
features a teddy bear who
educates and entertains kids,
stole the hearts of the judges,
winning them a VIP tour of
BBC Birmingham.
Midland’s education
programme is in its third year.
The RTS Centre visited local
secondary schools, offering
12- to 14-year-olds an insight
into TV and visual media.

30

The centre held a series
of workshops at the schools,
where students learned
about a variety of TV jobs,
ranging from the more obvious roles, such as writers,
directors and camera operators, to those less associated
with the industry, such as
accountants, engineers and
facilities managers.
The students were then
divided into small teams to
create a new TV show and
pitch it to a commissioner.
At each workshop, a guest
speaker from BBC Birming-

ham talked to the students
about their life in TV, and
picked a winning team from
the school to go forward to
the grand finale.
Fifteen schools took part
in the programme, with the
winning teams attending the
finale on 29 June at the University of Wolverhampton.
At the finale they presented
their ideas to a panel of
expert judges including David
Jennings, head of regional and
local programming at BBC
Birmingham.
Matthew Bell

Goodhand
wins young
tech award

B

BC trainee broadcast engineer James
Goodhand is the
winner of the 2016
RTS Young Technologist of
the Year Award.
“James impressed the jury
with his technical knowledge,
ability to solve problems and
his understanding of the
needs of the user,” said digital
media consultant Terry Marsh,
who chaired the award jury.
Goodhand graduated from
UCL with a degree in physics

James Goodhand
before joining the BBC’s
trainee scheme. “He is an
extremely impressive and
visionary engineer,” said BBC
head of newsgathering operations Morwen Williams.
Goodhand added: “I would
like to thank all of those who
have been involved in my
training and development
since entering the industry.”
The runner-up prize, the
Coffey Award for Excellence
in Technology, went to BT
designer Christos Danakis.
Matthew Bell